Chefs Relax in Bruni’s Absence; Chinese Seafood: Now With Fewer Drugs!Frank Bruni is out of the city until January 23, or maybe January 31. Either way, chefs at new restaurants will be breathing a little bit easier until he returns. [Eater]
The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies has released a report saying that cloning causes suffering to animals, making it unjustifiable to clone them for the food supply. [NYT]
Top Chef winner Hung Huynh was spotted in Las Vegas at Company, the same restaurant where Season Two contestant Marcel Vigneron works as a cook. It’s no coincidence, though; they’re buds from cooking school. [Eater L.A.]
In Other Magazines
Food Writers Dwell Happily in the Past This MonthThe best stories in this month’s crop of food mags are old. Saveur, which leads the year off with the Saveur 100, runs highlights from the WPA’s unpublished 1937 opus, America Eats, a documentary record of American foodways that is only now seeing the light of day; the images excerpted here are evocative and beautiful and make us eager to see the America Eats book to be published (finally) later this year. Gourmet is devoted to southern cooking, with a wonderful, previously unpublished “What Is Southern?” leadoff essay by the late Edna Lewis, formerly of Café Nicholson. Bon Appétit goes with a “Green Issue” with a long piece by Blue Hill’s Dan Barber on vegetables, an ecofriendly meat guide by sausage guru Bruce Aidells, and a moving essay on a vegetarian who returns to the meat wagon because of sausages. Food & Wine is something of a bore, consisting mostly of lists of “Tastes to Try in 2008,” most of which were short on detail and long on obviousness. (Fiamma has a new chef!) Finally, Food Arts, which won’t come out till later this week, has a major service feature on beef, along with an essay by French Culinary Institute techno whiz Dave Arnold on hydrocolloids, a class of gelatins big in molecular-gastronomy circles.
Mediavore
Hot Dogs Out, Halal In; More on Flor de Mayo’s Alleged Abuses“The hot dog now is for tourists,” and halal food has taken its place as New York’s signature street fare. Watch the video. [NYT]
Related: Cartography [NYM]
Flor de Mayo allegedly paid one of its workers $90 for 72 hours of work in one week — and made him provide his own bicycle for deliveries. [Newsday]
The Chinese government now realizes that exporting bad food is in fact bad for business. [Forbes]
